In the light of a disturbing abdication of responsibility among major critics with respect to the continuing importance of reading our modern writers, the recent critical neglect of Flannery O'Connor should not be surprising….

Since the appearance of her first novel, Wise Blood, over ten years ago, Miss O'Connor has not exactly overwhelmed either critics or readers with her gifts. There has not been merely neglect, however, but hostility as well…. Even her professed friends have often damned her with the faint praise of continuing the great modern tradition of "Southern Gothic." One barrier to her acceptance has surely been that, rather like the farmers in her region who are paid not to overproduce, her production has been severely limited in quantity. She has written only two novels and a baker's dozen of short stories. Her small "quota" is a function, I think, not only of her exquisite...